Receive the latest health updates in your inbox

The temporary shortage of Tamiflu is resolved, while local hospitals issue a "Code Yellow" to deal with the rise in flu cases. Collin County has run out of flu shots for adults, meanwhile Google is tracking CDC information about the flu outbreak. (Published Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014)

Over the last week John Peter Smith Hospital officials have been so swamped with flu patients they haven't been able to talk about what they've being seeing and experiencing.

On Thursday afternoon, the hospital's chief medical officer, Dr. Gary Floyd, provided some insights into how the flu is impacting the hospital and patients.

"It has rivaled other years," Floyd said of how sick influenza is making some people this season.

Floyd said he hopes his hospital has seen the worst of the flu season, but he wouldn't be surprised to see another surge in cases.

However, there is at least one promising number at JPS. At one point 26 people were hospitalized with flu and eight were in the ICU. On Thursday, the numbers were down to 10 hospitalizations and three in the ICU.

But as recently as Monday, JPS say 350 patients and during the last few weeks saw 380 on one day. On a typical day the hospital may see about 280 to 300 patients.

"That's a big impact and a lot of patients are requiring admission, more than usual, and that fills up beds upstairs," Floyd said.

Floyd shared one example where 35 people were waiting to be admitted to the hospital in the 56-room emergency department.

Earlier this week the hospital went to a "Code Yellow," canceling elective procedures, stopping non-emergency transfers and having staff add hours.

"This is a way of just heightening the awareness, that hey, 'we've got significant patient volume, in case you haven't looked around,'" Floyd said. "We use that again to help coordinate internal and external resources that might be needed. It's not unusual for us, we have many emergency codes, as a level one trauma center we use those emergency codes to make sure we can continue to deliver acute patient care."

The hospital says the medical community works together and that it looks to see where other facilities need help or can help them.

"We all trade around, not just resources, but bed space and what have you," he said.

Helping collect and coordinate that is the North Central Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council, or "The RAC." Executive Director Rick Antonisse says in the last week the non-profit state contractor initiated bed counts to help hospitals see where transfers are possible and to see the impacts of the flu on the 19 county region of North Texas that it oversees. The RAC has also supplied ventilators to hospitals in need.

"Last week and early this week there were challenges with a couple of hospitals and we do have a cache of resources available to us for crisis events," Antonisse said.

The flu is by no means a crisis, but rather considered a surge of cases at this point. It's a surge Floyd says JPS is handling.